4/20 Celebration at the Hippie Museum

Who says 4/20 has to be just one day?

To Normal Bean, a local music promoter and founder of Springfield’s Hippie Museum, the celebration is about more than just a day in April. It’s a four-day marijuana marathon at the Hippie Museum, a new concert and events venue dedicated to preserving the counterculture movement. 

Bean says the celebration will highlight cannabis as a key part of hippie culture. 

“As the Hippie Museum, we want to talk about that and share that and record it because it’s part of our culture,” Bean says. “Like it or not, it’s what fueled everything along; it was the glue that kept people together.”

The museum will host musicians, artists and other performers April 20-23, with appearances from blues musician Johnny Wheels, hip-hop artist Real One, musician Stone Hart and from Normal Bean himself and his band. 

Bean officially opened the museum in February with a performance from counterculture rock band Big Brother and Holding Company.

But attendees of the festival will get more than music. According to Sarah de Leon, the museum’s events coordinator, the museum will host cannabis vendors — mostly local dispensaries — inside and outside of the venue. 

Special events include a “ganja banquet” on the 22nd, featuring a variety of pot-infused morsels, and the “hookah puffaolympic” Oregon bong challenge on the 23rd. Participants in the challenge can win awards for holding in a bong hit for the longest amount of time, clearing the bowl of their bong the fastest and holding back their urge to cough. 

Attendees can use a designated smoking room at the back of the venue to safely and legally consume cannabis, de Leon says. 

In the past, Bean hosted 4/20 festivals in Eugene as a member of the Eugene Pot Club. As a cannabis activist, Bean says the celebration is also meant to honor the movement to legalize recreational cannabis.  

“Cannabis “is a way to share and a way to communicate,” Bean says. “It causes you to slow down, stop and communicate with your brother instead of racing around. I think it’s something we need in our country right now.”

The 4/20 celebration at the Hippie Museum, at 535 Main Street in Springfield, runs Wednesday, April 20 through Saturday, April 23. Doors open at noon each day, with no specified closing time. Tickets are $25 for a day pass or $60 for the week.